The ingredients that make up a truly great film are actor’s prowess, cinematography, storyline and texture. But these attributes are not stand-alone. They can’t be just tossed into a pot and stirred. They must be intricately woven together by an expert director that knows the story intimately and knows how he wants to tell it.

None of the above is required to make money with a truly awful film. All that’s required is non-stop chase scenes, endless loud explosions and violent characters dressed up in various costumes. Those films can make a ton of money stinking up theaters, but they are NOT in the artistic league of the few that are remembered for more than a week.

A truly great film with all the ingredients weaved together very expertly by up-and-coming director David McKenzie is “Hell or High Water” out this week in limited release. The film plot proceeds in an unhurried fashion, giving few clues as to the whys & wherefores until the audience begins to read it between the lines. It’s a plain and simple story of desolation and desperation in a plain and simple homeland. It’s quiet and restrained and there is no massive climax.

The cinematographer captures the gloom of hopeless rural life in West Texas and the bravado of hustlers trying to beat a cruel system within a cruel system that has ruined their lives and their locale. A rich palate of Southwestern culture and color.

This film captures the originality of the director’s insight to explore this nexus and the complexity of the actors’ performance. Not too difficult for the veteran Jeff Bridges, but it turns out that Chris Pine puts in an absolutely outstanding performance. Ben Foster is magnificent and chilling. All the bit players fit the locale to perfection.

“Hell or High Water” is the best film I’ve seen this year. I do believe it will get a mention for a Golden Globe if not an Academy Award for best picture. I also think that Ben Foster as Tanner Howard will get some serious acting nods.

I give it five of five desolate desert landscapes

This is the “art and soul” of film. Must see.

I wasn’t terribly interested in a bastardization of a classic, especially for the seemingly vacuous purpose of promoting “diversity”. But I didn’t have anything else going for me this weekend, so I decided to break down and see the new “Ghostbusters 2016” with the four women.

Some of the critics have not been kind to this re-do of the stellar classic from 1984. That original is considered by many to be perfection and should not be altered any more than a Mozart concerto. To quote Antonio Salieri: “Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God”. Extremely reliable review “Rotten Tomatoes” audience ratings were pretty bad (49%).

It wasn’t awful but it wasn’t good either. It was just mediocre. The plot is hokey. The characters are developed as thinly retreaded caricatures of the 1984 film.  The four women compete with each other for the camera, especially Kate McKinnon (Steve McQueen was famous for this in his films). The endless CGI computer effects get tedious at the end. The director didn’t know when to quit.

I see this film as contentiously political as the current presidential race. The film industry is producing anything now that can be termed “diverse”and they’re stretching. The point of this film seems to be that there should be more women in film, then going back to feed on the past rather than moving into the future. They also appear to be trying to reverse some of the perceived sexist stereotypes of the original 1984 film, replacing the secretary with hunky Chris Hemsworth, making him the butt of reverse-sexist jokes, but it falls flat.

There are a few of the original cast in cameo roles. A half-hearted cameo from Bill Murray goes nowhere. The Ghostbusters uniform makes them look more like garbage collectors. Each gimmick is almost crafted to wait for a canned laughter.

Ghostbusters 2016 does nothing to innovate on what came 32 years before. It resembles a Saturday Night Live gimmick that went too long (and everyone knows SNL hasn’t been funny since 1973). I went home, clicked on the original 1984 Ghostbusters and marveled at the creativity and innovation that the 2016 version simply forged.

I give it 2 of 5 High Heels sticking to the floor. It’s marginally funny. Slightly better than a Scooby Doo episode.

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A weekend EXTRA: Not a lot on TV these days now that most of the really good ones, including Game of Thrones (nominated for 23 Emmys) are on hiatus.

The one cable show that stands out is “The Night Of”, Sunday nights (HBO) at 9 pm. This one really, really promises to be a world-class winner. It’s set in New York City where a naïve kid of Pakistani heritage innocently drifts into a situation of increasing danger to him. Each step of the way offers very subtle clues to where this is going and it’s spellbinding. You get a scary sense of foreboding but you can’t quite put your finger on why.

The jaded, streetwise cops doing their job to perfection, the detective asking exactly the right questions that no one should ever answer without counsel, the street cameras detailing everything along the way, The truly frightening environment, the series of events that rush toward easy conclusions. And what will be best of all, the jaded lawyer casually passing by, looking with curiosity that slowly dawns to “what’s wrong with this picture”. John Turturro will be absolutely magnificent in this series.

It’s going to be truly great. http://www.refinery29.com/2016/07/116812/sofia-black-delia-interview-andrea-cornish-the-night-of-death

A bit of a departure from my usual film reviews. A film I VERY strongly recommend you never see. I’ll paint you a word picture of the interesting portions. The rest should be trashed.

This film got a lot of chatter at Cannes, a venue that spawns a lot of interesting independent films that would ordinarily never make it to theaters. This film sounded interesting and so I saw it in an afternoon showing. Towards the end, several people walked out in disgust, deservedly so. This director, Nicolas Winding Refn, worked an interesting concept, then let it degenerate to patently offensive visuals that weren’t needed and were seemingly placed for effect that backfired.

This is a film exploring the ruthless modeling industry, in which women really are shaped shaped into barren, soulless objects to generate interest for marketing of “things”.

Jesse, a maybe naïve 16-year-old orphan, runs away to the big city to pursue a career in modeling. “I can’t sing, dance or write……… but I’m “pretty” and I think I can make money from that”. She then proceeds to stand out from the other “pretty” young women as those in the business of finding and building models instantly see the quality of her being “it”. That quality that can’t be described but can be instantly discerned when viewed.

There are two telling scenes. The first is then Jesse gets a photo session with a top model photographer, an appropriately weird guy who takes one look at her and clears the room for a “closed session” (to photograph her nude). Jesse has zero experience with men, much less extremely powerful men who know how to manipulate women to suit the camera. Jesse (played by 18 year old knockout beauty Elle Fanning who doesn’t have much experience with such men either) shows genuine and absolutely stunning emotional response of a young girl entering a universe she has no conception of. These emotions paint her face as he paints her body for the camera.

The second is a scene of about a dozen veteran, drop dead beautiful young women sitting around a big room in their underwear, shapely legs elegantly crossed in 6 inch heels waiting to be called to parade themselves in front of a bored fashion designer for a spot in his show. The designer barely notices most of them, his female assistant dismissing them with a laconic “thank you”. Jesse steps in front and at first glance his jaw literally drops. He can’t take his eyes off her. It’s fascinating to watch.

But in the end, Jesse succumbs to the dehumanizing, defeminizing monstrosity that is the modeling industry, predatory males on every level and the icy scorn of the soulless “also ran” vixens. By mid-film, Jesse has been expertly shaped away from humanity. She makes being bought and sold as a product seem exhilarating, which explains why the lesser players, beautiful that they may be, but not with the “it” factor get inevitably rejected.

The first half of this film would have made an excellent HBO drama, discarding the explicit and extremely offensive scenes that follow. Repulsive even to me and I thought I’d seem them all. These scenes do not add to the director’s original vision at all and simply ruin the film, guaranteeing extremely bad word-of-mouth, including mine, and poor box office showing. Exactly what his reward should be. This would have been a better film had it been directed by David Lynch.

I give this offensive film two ratings:

For the film, 0 of 5 glaring neon makeups

For the selected concepts: 5 of 5 flawless, flawed beauties.

NOT recommended by me. If it comes up eventually on HBO, watch the first half then trash it.

I freely admit I went to see this film for little other reason than I like George Clooney and I’ve pretty much liked everything he’s done in the past. I knew little else about this film. As it turned out, I wish I’d watched a re-run of Ocean’s 12 (2004) for free.

The film industry is now exploiting the various ills of society that make headlines and so generates public interest. Movies that are “inspired” by real events, which means that they’re free form interpretations, not of the accuracy thereof, but of the directors’ vision of what might sell tickets. A perfect example is “Concussion” (2016), “based on” real events but otherwise depicting extraneous dramatic license. Steve Jobs”(2015) a masterful portrayal of fiction “inspired by” a real person. The same film would be as interesting about a completely fictional character.

“Money Monster” was designed to explore the greed of money managers indulging risky gambling with someone else’s money, then diverting the blame to computer errors. Interesting premise and bankable actors, but it fails dismally. The blame is unclear. I’d put most of it on the director Jodie Foster who simply let her vision run out of control, leading to a mish-mash of impossible, unbelievable loosely-connected scenarios leading to a ridiculous conclusion. None of this could have actually happened, nor would it have progressed as it did to the nonsense conclusion.

“Money Monster” purports to dredge the “greed decade” of the 80’s up to the new Millennium audience to point out these things are still happening. But as George Burns said: “It’s been done”, and it’s been done better with “The Big Short” (2015). Unfortunately, “Money Monster” only succeeds in showing that the film medium generated a free form fantasy, like a Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon featuring the voices of A-List actors. A logical disconnect between reality and fantasy.

This is a film not to waste the price of admission on. I give it a 2 out of 5 odd shots fired here and there. Wait for it to land in your supermarket bin.

One good quip though: “He’s a pig in a prom dress!”. Haven’t heard that one before

A very interesting film, but not for the usual reasons.

I think the writers sat down for a brainstorming session and decided on a novel and interesting screenplay. What if the memory from a dying man could be transferred to another for the purpose of mining it for needed and necessary information. Sort of like a less involuted “Inception” (2010). Maybe a variation on the theme of “Face Off” (1997), John Travolta & Nick Cage switching faces (and personalities).

But (yawn), let’s not get too technically accurate as to the process no one knows what the process is and filmgoers don’t care anyway. Skipping over the ‘Sci’ part of “Sci-Fi” is an acceptable expediency because a strong story line trumps all.

So lets consider a neurophysiologist has played around with memory transfer in rats, then finding someone who wouldn’t mind subjecting himself (forced) to the highly experimental process (A jailed sociopath??), then see what he might remember about some details that might save the world.

Now, technically it might be possible to do this, but it would entail uploading the bits of information on transfer-RNA that (probably) constitute “memory” into a supercomputer then downloading it all to a “freshly erased human brain. No, not this week, but remember that what sits on my desk is more computer power that existed in the world 70 years ago. In another 70 years Moore’s Law suggests it will be possible if someone cares to do it, and I know people that do.

The initial chase of the spy carrying the details is much like the great TV advertisement where the mother calls her son who’s running from multiple assailants to let him know that the squirrels are back in the attic and “your father won’t call the exterminators….says it’s personal this time”, as the villains close in.

It’s never explained what mission the nearly dead spy was on, nor why Jericho (Kevin Costner), a violent prisoner with “a total lack of empathy” was selected to be the recipient. Tommy Lee Jones as the doctor looks clinically depressed most of the time. Gary Oldman gets the overacting award for finding inopportune moments to shout at everyone

For all intensive practical purposes, “Criminal” is a bad film. It’s writers absorbed two decades of pedestrian sci-fi movies, assiduously collected and replicated all their worst attributes. Further, putting world-class actors Gary Oldman and Tommy Lee Jones in the same film with incredibly insipid dialog is a crime against nature. If any interest in the subject matter, the film version of “Flowers for Algernon” (Charly- 1968) is the gold standard and won an Oscar for Cliff Robertson.

HOWEVER……..there is one saving grace for this otherwise terrible film, and that’s Kevin Costner. He’s not getting stellar reviews but ignore that. His performance in this film is EXCEPTIONAL. He brings an icy interpretation to this truly uncompensated sociopath. He goes about the business of sociopathy with chilling efficiency, then as another personality slowly infiltrates his being, exhibits a convincing confusion and bewilderment. The infiltration of childhood innocence into the being of a cold-blooded sociopath is well done by Costner.

No, don’t spend good money to see “Criminal” on the big screen bur definitely see it when it comes on HBO or the Torrents. Costner’s performance is riveting. He has an extensive history of taking on roles he thinks he can do justice to, caring nothing for reviews. This is one of those roles and one of the times that reviews aren’t germane.

I give “Criminal” two of five felonious haircuts (but Kevin Costner a solid 4 of 5 fingers-to-nose)

David Crippen, MD, FCCM
Department of Critical Care Medicine
Administrative Assistant- Pat Kretzmer 412 647 8410

“The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it
because the only people who really know where
it is are those who’ve gone over it”.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

“Eye in the Sky”, starring Helen Mirren and the late Alan Rickman, was dropped into Pittsburgh theaters this weekend with no fanfare and virtually no advance marketing previews. I had never heard of it before watching Helen Mirren on Charlie Rose a few nights ago. Both talked about the film extensively and showed several clips. It sounded quite interesting and so I saw it today.

I’m glad I did. This film is an absolute gem of filmmaking. 93% on rotten tomatoes.

The plot involves the classic human dilemma of having to choose the lesser of two available evils within a finite time limit and with the potential for “collateral damage”. Opinions from the military who know the “right” thing to do for maximum benefit and civilian oversight bureaucrats who desire to dilute the consequences of either decision by involving more bureaucrats at higher administrative levels.

“Death from the sky” (Photo) is a very different concept than that of Col. Kilgore and the 1st Air Cav in Vietnam. It was up close and personal. This film vividly shows how modern warfare has become increasingly remote and technological, encompassing remote operatives executing extraordinarily specific objectives. Incredibly clear, focused vision technology from over 20,000 feet in the air and miniature camera that can fit and function inside flying cockroach-sized appliances flying around rooms without notice.

As a bit of an aside, one of the characters in “Eye in the Sky” is a British national named Susan Danford who married Arabic radical and became radicalized herself, adopting the name Ayesha AL-Hady. She was listed in the “most wanted” list of terrorists. Unclear if this is a real person, but there is precedent in American radical political history.

Black radical Joanne Chesimard was a member of the original Black Panther Party (BPP) in the mid-1960s, eventually migrating to the more violent Black Liberation Army (BLA) around 1971. She changed her name to an African version, Assata Shakur (See Photo). She was involved in numerous felonies and the killings of several State Troopers, eventually caught in 1973 and after numerous trials, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1977.

In 1979 she escaped from prison in a daring jailbreak aided by the BLA and was secreted out of the country to Cuba where she resides to this day. She continues to spew rather outdated radical diatribe on a website bearing her name. In 2013, she was added to the “Most Wanted Terrorist List”, the first woman to be listed. The FBI continues to classify her as a “domestic terrorist” and continues to offer a $1 million reward for assistance in her capture. One wonders if she might be a target of a similar action as described in this film if she could be accurately located.

“Eye in the Sky” offers no particular political message, partisan or otherwise, just a thoughtful film about the consequences of increasingly impersonal and long-distance warfare. An absolute nail-biter of a thriller playing out in real time with edge-of-your-seat suspense on every link of the chain.

Quick aside factoids: Senior female officers in the British Army are referred to as “Mum”. The fatigue clothing worn by the American Air Force officers in Nevada appear to be authentic “Tiger Stripes” like I wore in Vietnam. We bartered them from the ROK (Republic of South Korea) troops. Usual US Army issue jungle gear stood out like a sore thumb in the bush. The tigers were nearly invisible (see photo taken by me on a LLRP in 1969). Keep your eye out for the resourceful Kenyan agent played by Somalian actor Barkhad Abdi last seen in “Captain Phillips” (2013).

I give it 5 (yes FIVE) of 5 deaths from above. A MUST SEE